Thanks Steve Valentine I appreciate the reply and agree that it is indeed a non completed artifact or a preform. I guess my one pondering at this point is at what point does a preform turn into a late stage in production artifact? To me the form here seems to be Kerrville, not completed for sure. Probably it is just an issue of symantics, I am just curious. I am lucky to have feedback from three respected members and in no way mean to contradict, I am just seeking knowledge in the production of artifacts. Thanks again for looking at all my crazy rocks and for sharing your years of knowledge with me.

Found the answer to my question in other postings on the forum. Seems preform apllies to all stages of unfinished artifacts regardless of if the end artifacts actual form can be determined or not. So by definition this is as all stated, a preform. Thanks again for all the great feedback!

People assume that the goal of anything knapped must have been removing waste to create a final shape -- a knife, point or whatever.

Rarely do they seem to consider that the oddly-shaped and apparently useless-looking things they find, flaked with no apparent purpose in mind, could have been flake cores.

With these, the flakes removed were the point of the exercise -- not whatever shape the core happened to end up with.

Although thin and brittle, the edges of a freshly removed flake are many times sharper than edges created by multiple flake removals (as in re-sharpening). I recall reading accounts by several people who, as an experiment, skinned out entire bison using only one. Flintknappers can probably tell you how many band aids they go through for this same reason. Especially with obsidian.

This same purposeful shape assumption creates the corollary to it -- that some of what people automatically dismiss as "waste flakes" (25-cent term = "debitage") may have been purposely created tools which were discarded after the task they were used to perform was accomplished.

If you'll notice on that one, thin, flat flakes of good size were being struck off -- ideally suited for xacto knife type tasks.

Now cores, having sharp edges, were often casually used for some task that came long (cutting, chopping, whatever). The fancy term for this ad hoc employment is "expedient use" (a silly term -- it was expedient for them to do everything they ever did. Otherwise they wouldn't have done it). But their primary purpose was to supply useful flakes -- the same as a book used as a doorstop is still, primarily, a book.